Import/Export colors different, without changing color space

[DQ_C]

Hi,

I'm sure this has been asked before and I genuinely don't understand what the problem is here, if it's a workflow issue or a bug.

Should mention I am using Affinity V2, on a monitor calibrated for BT.1886 but it happens on Rec.709 as well.

Here are the steps I've been taking to troubleshoot, as this doesn't happen to me in PS or DaVinci Resolve.

• If I open a file with sRGB profile embedded, it shows up brighter.
• I assign it my monitor ICC, the colours become correct.
• I export with sRGB embedded - image is darker. If I export with my monitor's ICC - image is WAY darker. 
  • should note, in Photo Viewer it shows up exactly as in Affinity, but browsers, Discord, everywhere else, the colours are darker, please see example below. The 3rd image is how it is supposed to export, but instead comes out as the 2nd, way darker.
• I re-assign sRGB, image becomes brighter again but exports correctly with sRGB embedded.
• Somewhere, at some point, some transform is applied without it being supposed to.

I have attached the image I'm using, not that it makes any particular difference.

Tl;dr - imports are bright by default, exports are dark compared to canvas.

Any further info I can offer, let me know.

Full disclosure, for what it's worth I don't expect this post to go anywhere as it seems to be common to have support just abandon threads - the ONE thing I really dislike about Affinity, everything else is honestly great. That said, Adobe's support is even worse, for higher costs. Call it a mini-rant.

Kind regards,
V.

 

[DQ_C]

Since I don't really expect an answer, I'll post my own after A LOT more digging than necessary.

The simple explanation is Window's colour management is so **** that browsers don't always know what to do. The image as shown in Affinity is "correct" after corroborating with a bunch other colour-managed applications and the only browser to show these images correctly is Firefox (Chrome and Edge also broken somehow). If these work for you, more power to it but if it looks right in Photo and you export with the correct ICC profile, you've done your best and the rest is wild wild west.

For me, Firefox is the only one showing the correct colours and I have no explanation why other than it uses the correct monitor profiles and it gives BY FAR the most control over colour management options.

Unless something is terribly wrong in my statements, in which case I welcome corrections, I would consider this thread closed, hopefully it helps others with a simple answer.

[RichardMH]

My second screen is sRGB and the Windows colour management behaves there. Your image and a jpeg exported from APh as sRGB with no corrections look the same in Photo there.

What colour space are you using in APh? (Edit->Prefernces->Colour) I'd suggest soft proofing but sRGB soft proofing is a bit iffy. 

[Palatino]

7 hours ago, DQ_C said:

Unless something is terribly wrong in my statements, in which case I welcome corrections,

 

16 hours ago, DQ_C said:

I assign it my monitor ICC, the colours become correct.

Your monitor profile is for your monitor and nothing else.

An image in sRGB, whether the profile is embedded or not, is by definition displayed correctly in all browsers. With other profiles, the browser must be capable of colour management, which not everyone is.

[cgidesign]

Neither assign a monitor ICC to an image nor convert the image into the monitor ICC. Those profiles are there to correct the deviation of your monitor from the profile your image is in. Affinity apps apply this final correction automatically. Firefox at default configuration assumes any input image to be in sRGB. In that case it does a correct conversion using, I think, perceptional rendering intent. If you want it to act like a softproofing device, you need to read about its color management and change the settings accordingly. Windows color management is part of that and can sometimes cause issues. See thread below:

Affinity's softproof might not help you because it is broken. See here:

and in much more detail here:

 

[Palatino]

Test: Is Your System ICC Version 4 Ready?

Display in my default browser Vivaldi. Safari can also display the PDF correctly, Vivaldi cannot.

[DQ_C]

6 hours ago, RichardMH said:

My second screen is sRGB and the Windows colour management behaves there. Your image and a jpeg exported from APh as sRGB with no corrections look the same in Photo there.

What colour space are you using in APh? (Edit->Prefernces->Colour) I'd suggest soft proofing but sRGB soft proofing is a bit iffy. 

To simplify the whole answer, I will ignore all the variations I've gone through as the only relevant one is sRGB. Soft proofing wouldn't really help as I don't plan on printing.

38 minutes ago, Palatino said:

 

Your monitor profile is for your monitor and nothing else.

An image in sRGB, whether the profile is embedded or not, is by definition displayed correctly in all browsers. With other profiles, the browser must be capable of colour management, which not everyone is.

See, I thought the same thing and I know in theory that is correct. Now, I know screenshots are the wrong way to troubleshoot colour-related issues, but you can clearly see something is DEFINITELY wrong here. Left is Opera/Chrome/Edge, right side is Affinity/Firefox/Photo viewer/XnView with cm enabled. The only explanation I can possibly come up with is that along the way, in it's *infinite wisdom* Windows has completely messed up which monitor profile is being fed to what. Honestly it's doing my head in and I eventually just pulled out my laptop to confirm what is actually being sent out and I will nuke this Windows install out of orbit because it's starting to get on my nerves.

16 minutes ago, cgidesign said:

Neither assign a monitor ICC to an image nor convert the image into the monitor ICC. Those profiles are there to correct the deviation of your monitor from the profile your image is in. Affinity apps apply this final correction automatically. Firefox at default configuration assumes any input image to be in sRGB. In that case it does a correct conversion using, I think, perceptional rendering intent. If you want it to act like a softproofing device, you need to read about its color management and change the settings accordingly. Windows color management is part of that and can sometimes cause issues.

Thank you for the detailed response, as replied earlier, soft proofing is not on my list as I do not go to print. And if I was, I simply wouldn't use anything but PS because I used to work on book editing and I have a working process.

I know that assigning the monitor profiles is incorrect, but it did give the desired results, which again is messing with my knowledge. Either way that has been somewhat clarified now - Windows is being erm..... Windows o_O... not something I can describe by the rules of this forum.

I am actually going to nuke this install and take it from scratch, I had to work on some reviews a while back which required me to switch between a number of displays and display pen tablets, I think something went terribly wrong along the way and I have no way of figuring it out because despite removing all profiles and devices not in use, they're somehow still in the system.

 

[DQ_C]

1 minute ago, Palatino said:

Test: Is Your System ICC Version 4 Ready?

Display in my default browser Vivaldi. Safari can also display the PDF correctly, Vivaldi cannot.

Every single browser passes every single test I've found, including the one you've linked. The problem still occurs. Anyway I believe this is becoming more of a Windows-related problem and less Affinity-related.

[cgidesign]

52 minutes ago, DQ_C said:

Windows is being erm..... Windows o_O

Yes - that Windows tends to assign wrong ICC profiles to a monitor can be a pain in the bu**.

[DQ_C]

SOLUTION:

Turns out Windows really is backwards as all hell.

Seems I was right all along, browsers were being fed the wrong colour profile, specifically the HDR calibration tool one. However I've purged all of the custom profiles and re-calibrated my monitors, one for Rec.709 with BT.1886 g2.4 TRC and the other with just plain old sRGB g2.2. This is now feeding all of the applications the correct profiles and the images are displayed correctly and consistently across both monitors, *all* browsers and apps.

Kudos to Greg Benz for helping out with replies on a 2y old thread on his own webpage! He seems to have confirmed in parallel that this HDR profile could be the problem.

Hope this helps others out there, thank you all for the input, much appreciated!

EDIT: It would seem the reason Firefox was showing the correct image is because it's supposedly "too dumb" to make use of HDR profiles. Then again, is it really dumb if it did the right thing?

Edited December 2, 2022 by DQ_C
Additional Info